3 Questions: Marcia Bartusiak on black holes and the history of science
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity — which, among other things, helped lead to the discovery of black holes, those mysterious, spacetime-bending collapsed stars. Now Marcia Bartusiak, a professor of the practice in MIT’s Graduate Science Writing Program, has a new book out, “Black Hole,” published today by Yale University Press, which details the history of the discovery of black holes. As Bartusiak recounts, the idea of black holes not only stemmed from general relativity; it also helped reinvigorate general relativity within the field of physics. Bartusiak recently talked to MIT News about her new book. Q. It is striking that while black holes are a 20th-century scientific discovery, versions of the idea go back to the 18th century. How seriously should we take those earlier ideas? A. I think people aren’t generally aware of the great polymath John Michell [1724-1793], a scholar at...